ABSTRACT
Alfred North Whitehead's work in cosmology and philosophy is a major contribution to the ongoing development of the transdisciplinary field of ecological economics as an alternative to neo-classical economics. Whitehead's motivation to develop the philosophy of organism was to frame a system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. The philosophy of organism is often difficult to grasp, and many interpreters report problems in understanding Whitehead's texts. This chapter considers Whitehead's philosophy of organism as an ontological frame of reference for interpreting ecological economics because it opens up a deeper understanding of economy as integrated in social and natural systems. In Science and the Modern World Whitehead introduced the main themes in the philosophy of organism and traces the tremendous impact scientific ideas have on all phases of life. One feature of Western thought that occupied Whitehead for most of his career was "the bifurcation of nature".
